Tag: Crawley Town

When Crawley Town travelled to Old Trafford for an FA Cup Fifth Round match against Manchester United in February of 2011, those who made the long journey north from West Sussex might have been forgiven for believing that they were living a dream come true. Previous financial issues had pushed the club to the brink of closure, yet in the winter of four and a half years ago the team was disappearing into the distance at the top of the Football Conference with a expensively-assembled team that made a mockery of the very idea of a distinction between “league”...

We continue our series of archive matches off the clubs of Football League One this evening with Crawley Town. For obvious reasons, finding videos of Crawley Town matches which go back a long way can be a little bit of a challenge, but we do have six videos featuring the second Football League club in Sussex. First up is a compilation of goals which features thirty different Crawley goalscorers from down the years. Next up are two matches from the club’s run to the Third Round of the FA Cup during the 1991/92 season. First we have a goal from their 2-0 win at Hayes in the Second Round of the competition, and this is followed by their short trip to Brighton & Hove Albion for their Third Round match. We then skip forward to the 2004/05 season for a home match in the Football Conference against Stevenage Borough, and to finish off we have two cup matches – an FA Trophy match away to Chesham United from December 2008 and their FA Cup match against Swindon Town from December 2010. You can follow Twohundredpercent on Twitter by clicking...

Of course, Rotherham United knew what they were getting themselves involved with when they took him on in the first place, but the news earlier this week that manager Steve Evans – subject of the most read post ever to appear on this little website – will now be the subject of a six match stadium ban for his new club over his involvement in some fairly ridiculous scenes earlier this during both during and after a League Two match between Bradford City and his previous club, Crawley Town. A stadium ban is more all-encompassing than a touchline ban. For six matches and with immediate effect, Evans will be banned from attending the ground at which Rotherham United’s first team are playing at any time during a match day, but those taken aback by the ruling should probably be aware that Evans has a lengthy history of such behaviour. In November 2005, Evans was given a £1,000 fine, which was suspended for a year, after admitting to using insulting or abusive words to the match official in a match against Peterborough United the previous month. In February 2006, Evans was escorted from the dug-out by police at half-time during a match between Grimsby Town and Boston United following a complaint of alleged foul and abusive language, which came after an incident during which the Grimsby Town goalkeeper Steve Mildenhall...

There is, perhaps, little to surprised about regarding the decision of Steve Evans to leave promotion-chasing Crawley Town for Rotherham United this morning. Rumours had been circulating for the last few days that Rotherham were interested in taking him and his baggage on and even the timing – with six games of the season left to play and Crawley Town two points off an automatic promotion place – isn’t a major shock. The Steve Evans show, from his crocodile tears in court when it looked as if he might be sent to prison over tax offences committed whilst at Boston United through to his heavy-handed gamesmanship of the last couple of years or so, has always been entirely about Steve Evans. Any discussion of the “Crawley miracle” was always tempered by amount of money that seemed to be flowing through the club and the tainting of the clubs name that came with his association with it. There was a suggestion of everything not quite being as it seemed at Broadfield Stadium as long ago as January, with the sales of Matthew Tubbs and Tyrone Barnett to AFC Bournemouth and Peterborough United respectively. Crawley Town had remained solvent throughout their Blue Square Bet Premier promotion season thanks in no small part to the money raised as a result of an FA Cup run which saw the club bow out at...

To wake up this morning and watch the sport segment from the BBC’s Breakfast programme, one might have figured that League Two had witnessed the beginning of the decline and fall of western civilisation rather than a fight at the end of a football match. Brows were furrowed and the tone of the presenters was hushed and dark. Indeed, it was almost difficult to believe that they had just watched a video of bunch of young men in polyester throwing punches at each other for thirty seconds. Just as Rome was neither built nor collapsed in a day, the world will not end because a handful of players from Bradford City and Crawley Town couldn’t rein it in at the end of last nights match at Valley Parade. Sure enough, to start pushing, shoving and throwing your fists around in a football pitch is not the smartest thing in the world to do, and even if we allow for the likelihood that the average professional football isn’t necessarily the sharpest tool in the box, the players involved last night should surely have known that, but a rush of blood to the head can do strange things to the brain of the male of our species. These things happen, and it seems unlikely that no amount of hand-wringing can prevent this. None of this means, of course, that the Football...